Housing in Exchange for Services Barometer 2026

Housing in exchange for services in France, in figures: as of 2 September 2026, ToitChezMoi lists 535 host listings and 6,849 guest profiles. “Housekeeping” is the service most requested by hosts (46.2% of listings), and 65.4% of offers are of the “Private Room in a Shared Home” type, with a median floor area of 18 m².

These figures cover every listing and profile online on ToitChezMoi in France as of 2 September 2026. They are frozen on that date and cover the entire population, with no sampling and therefore no margin of error.

This page does not describe the scheme, it measures it: the principle of housing in exchange for services, its legal framework and the points to agree on before committing are covered in the practical guide.

Key findings

Supply: host listings

  • Since 1 January, 1,003 listings in total have gone online, of which 535 were still visible on 2 September 2026: the listings visible at any given moment reflect only part of the year's activity.
  • The service most often requested by hosts is “Housekeeping”, mentioned in 46.2% of online listings (n = 535, data as of 2 September 2026).
  • The most frequently offered type of accommodation is “Private Room in a Shared Home”: 65.4% of online listings (n = 535, data as of 2 September 2026).
  • The median floor area of the accommodation offered is 18 m² (n = 484, data as of 2 September 2026).

Demand: guest profiles

  • As of 2 September 2026, ToitChezMoi listed 535 housing-for-services offers and 6,849 guest profiles online in France.
  • The widest gap between supply and demand concerns “Shopping”: 56.2% of guests offer it (n = 6,849) versus 20.7% of hosts who request it (n = 535), a gap of 35.5 points (data as of 2 September 2026).

Terms of the exchange

  • 56 out of 535 listings state that the accommodation is offered rent-free, purely in exchange for services (data as of 2 September 2026).
  • The minimum commitment period is rarely documented: 183 out of 535 listings specify it (data as of 2 September 2026).

Which services do hosts request?

Hosts choose the services they expect from a closed list, and usually tick several. The table below gives, for each one, the share of online listings that mention it: the shares therefore add up to more than 100%, since a single listing may ask for help with housekeeping, gardening and pet care.

Service Share of listings
Housekeeping 46.2% (n = 535)
Cooking 28.4% (n = 535)
Small DIY work 26.2% (n = 535)
Gardening and outdoor maintenance 24.9% (n = 535)
Baby-sitting / Childcare 23.4% (n = 535)
Shopping 20.7% (n = 535)
Residence monitoring and maintenance 16.8% (n = 535)
Senior assistance 16.1% (n = 535)
Pets 16.1% (n = 535)
External maintenance 13.5% (n = 535)
Interior maintenance 12.9% (n = 535)
Tutoring 9.2% (n = 535)
Assistance to people with disabilities 6.2% (n = 535)
Foreign language 4.7% (n = 535)
Transportation 4.5% (n = 535)
Farm hand 3.2% (n = 535)
Sport 2.2% (n = 535)
Computer aid 2.2% (n = 535)
Couchsurfing while traveling or on a trip 1.7% (n = 535)
Music 1.3% (n = 535)

What do guests offer, and where are the gaps?

The table below compares, service by service, the share of host listings that request the service with the share of guest profiles that offer it. The two percentages do not share the same base: the first is calculated on the 535 online listings, the second on the 6,849 online profiles. The "gap" column is their difference in percentage points (share offered minus share requested): it measures an imbalance between supply and demand for that service, not a number of people.

Service Requested by hosts Offered by guests Gap
Shopping 20.7% (n = 535) 56.2% (n = 6,849) +35.5 pts
Residence monitoring and maintenance 16.8% (n = 535) 37.1% (n = 6,849) +20.3 pts
Tutoring 9.2% (n = 535) 24.7% (n = 6,849) +15.5 pts
Pets 16.1% (n = 535) 31.1% (n = 6,849) +15.0 pts
Baby-sitting / Childcare 23.4% (n = 535) 36.7% (n = 6,849) +13.3 pts
Senior assistance 16.1% (n = 535) 28.6% (n = 6,849) +12.5 pts
Foreign language 4.7% (n = 535) 16.5% (n = 6,849) +11.8 pts
Computer aid 2.2% (n = 535) 12.9% (n = 6,849) +10.7 pts
Cooking 28.4% (n = 535) 36.5% (n = 6,849) +8.1 pts
Farm hand 3.2% (n = 535) 11.0% (n = 6,849) +7.8 pts
Sport 2.2% (n = 535) 9.5% (n = 6,849) +7.3 pts
Housekeeping 46.2% (n = 535) 51.5% (n = 6,849) +5.3 pts
Couchsurfing while traveling or on a trip 1.7% (n = 535) 7.0% (n = 6,849) +5.3 pts
Transportation 4.5% (n = 535) 9.7% (n = 6,849) +5.2 pts
Gardening and outdoor maintenance 24.9% (n = 535) 28.3% (n = 6,849) +3.4 pts
Music 1.3% (n = 535) 3.7% (n = 6,849) +2.4 pts
Assistance to people with disabilities 6.2% (n = 535) 7.6% (n = 6,849) +1.4 pts
Small DIY work 26.2% (n = 535) 24.3% (n = 6,849) -1.9 pts
Interior maintenance 12.9% (n = 535) 9.9% (n = 6,849) -3.0 pts
External maintenance 13.5% (n = 535) 7.5% (n = 6,849) -6.0 pts

What type of accommodation is offered?

Housing in exchange for services covers very different situations, from a room in the host's home to fully self-contained accommodation. Each listing declares a single type, so the shares below add up to 100%.

Type Share of listings
Private Room in a Shared Home 65.4% (n = 535)
Entire Place 28.0% (n = 535)
Sofa (Couchsurfing) 6.5% (n = 535)

The median floor area of the accommodation offered is 18 m² (1st quartile 12 m², 3rd quartile 37 m², n = 484).

56 out of 535 listings explicitly state that the accommodation is offered with no rent at all, purely in exchange for services. Conversely, 197 listings ask for a financial contribution on top of the services: for those, the median rent is €150 (1st quartile €100, 3rd quartile €250). The remaining listings leave this field blank.

What amenities does the accommodation offer?

Amenities are declared by the host from a closed list, across all 535 online listings; each amenity is counted only once per listing.

Amenity Share of listings
WIFI 81.7% (n = 535)
Garden 64.9% (n = 535)
Private bathroom 51.4% (n = 535)
Private kitchen 35.9% (n = 535)
Pool 13.3% (n = 535)

Who are the guests?

Of the 6,849 online profiles, 5,721 state their year of birth. The proportions below relate to this subset only, not to all profiles.

Age group Share of documented profiles
18-24 years 34.0% (n = 5,721)
25-34 years 23.5% (n = 5,721)
35-49 years 21.7% (n = 5,721)
50-64 years 18.0% (n = 5,721)
65+ years 2.9% (n = 5,721)

The median age of guests who state their year of birth is 30.

Women, men, couples: who is looking for housing in exchange for services?

Profile Share of profiles
Woman 50.1% (n = 6,849)
Man 35.4% (n = 6,849)
Family 6.9% (n = 6,849)
Couple 5.8% (n = 6,849)
Other 1.7% (n = 6,849)

Where are the offers located in France?

Supply is widely scattered across the country: it is counted in listings per region, rarely in listings per town. The table gives raw counts for each side of the market rather than percentages: at this level, several regions have too few listings for a share to be publishable. Each row links to the corresponding listing pages, which still follow the regional boundaries in force before 2016: a current region therefore sometimes opens several of them.

Region Listings Guests
Île-de-France 122 2,143
Occitanie Listings: Languedoc-Roussillon · Midi-Pyrénées 72 652
Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur 70 952
Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Listings: Auvergne · Rhône-Alpes 54 619
Nouvelle-Aquitaine Listings: Aquitaine · Limousin · Poitou-Charentes 43 493
Grand Est Listings: Alsace · Champagne-Ardenne · Lorraine 32 327
Bretagne 30 246
Normandie Listings: Basse-Normandie · Haute-Normandie 27 176
Pays de la Loire 25 234
Hauts-de-France Listings: Nord-Pas-de-Calais · Picardie 23 288
Bourgogne-Franche-Comté Listings: Bourgogne · Franche-Comté 16 117
Centre-Val de Loire Listings: Centre 13 125
Corse 2 24
Guyane 1 0

How long is the commitment requested?

Of the 535 online listings, 183 specify a minimum commitment period. The proportions below relate to this subset only.

Minimum period Share of documented listings
1 month 30.1% (n = 183)
2 months 9.8% (n = 183)
3 months 6.6% (n = 183)
4 months 4.9% (n = 183)
5 months 0.5% (n = 183)
6 months 4.9% (n = 183)
7 months 1.1% (n = 183)
8 months 1.1% (n = 183)
9 months 1.6% (n = 183)
10 months 6.0% (n = 183)
11 months 2.7% (n = 183)
12 months 30.6% (n = 183)

Methodology

Population: every listing and profile published and publicly visible on ToitChezMoi, located in mainland and overseas France, as of 2 September 2026. No sampling: the percentages cover the entire population and therefore have no margin of error. Each proportion is published together with its count. Breakdowns based on fewer than 30 observations are flagged "sample too small" instead of being given a figure. The data come exclusively from structured fields; no value is extracted from free text. Inconsistent regional labels are mapped to the current French regions; 5 listings and 450 profiles carry a label that cannot be matched and are excluded from the regional count only. Service, accommodation and profile labels are translated from the French original.

Stock and flow. Every proportion on this page relates to the stock: the listings and profiles actually online on 2 September 2026. The number of listings put online since 1 January (1,003) is, by contrast, a flow, and also includes listings that have since been withdrawn. This second figure has two limitations: the database only keeps the latest validation date of a listing, so the flow does not count listings validated in an earlier year and still online since; and as no usable withdrawal date is recorded, the population exposed at a past date cannot be reconstructed. The flow is therefore a floor, not an exact total.

Reusing this data

The aggregated data presented on this page are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. You may reproduce, redistribute and transform them and create charts from them, including for commercial purposes, provided you credit the source.

The licence covers only the statistical aggregates on this page. It does not extend to the rest of the website, to individual listings, or to the database from which these aggregates are derived.

Download the data for this edition (CSV): one figure per row, with its reference count, under the same licence. Labels are in French.

Suggested citation

Source: ToitChezMoi Housing in Exchange for Services Barometer, data as of 2 September 2026, CADENIA.
https://www.toitchezmoi.com/pages/en/housing-in-exchange-for-services-barometer-2026

For any clarification, additional data or interview request: contact@toitchezmoi.com.